Gender Constructs Quotes

“If a man loves a girl who is in the first place young and inexperienced; who in the second place is educated with a background of caveman tradition, a middle-ground of poetry and romance, and a foreground of unspoken hope and interest all centering upon the one Event; and who has, furthermore, absolutely no other hope or interest worthy of the name - why, it is a comparatively easy manner to sweep her off her feet with a dashing attack.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland

“She stopped walking between two doors. They were labeled, in quixotic fashion, “Squids” and “Mollusks.” Shaun raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. “Which one am I?”
“All gender is a construct and binary gender doubly so, but you have a hard shell and you’re hard to kill, so you’re probably a mollusk,” said Foxy blithely.”
― Mira Grant, Rise: A Newsflesh Collection

“I thought about all the press conferences I'd seen over the years, parents trotted out for missing kids, killed kids, abused kids. Everyone feels sorry for those parents, those mothers, until they don't. Until the mothers don't cry enough or cry to much. Until the mother are too put-together or not put-together enough. Until the mothers are angry. Because that's the one thing women are never, ever allowed to be. We can be sad, distraught, confused, pleading, forgiving. But not furious. Fury is reserved for other people. The worst thing you can be is an angry woman, and angry *mother*.”
― Amy Engel, The Familiar Dark